How To Sprint Successfully Towards Your Financial Goals

When I complain about my spending habits to people, I often hear that if I had some big financial goals, long-term saving plans and far-reaching dreams, I would stop spending. Instead, I would work towards achieving these great goals and grand ideas.

I was even asked if I know what my long-term financial goals are in this life. Hmmm… I said to myself then, let’s see:

I want to retire with Beaker by the age of 55.

I want us to be able to take long trips at least twice a year when we retire .

I want to have a small house filled with five pugs and three cats.

I want to retire in this house with Beaker and our pugs and cats.

I want to feel secure in our retirement and never worry about money.

These are my ultimate financial goals. I also call them dreams.

Do they motivate me to stop spending and focus on saving? No.

I am not a marathon runner. I am a sprinter.

Some people focus on long-term goals that are exhausting marathons. Other people, like me, perform best under the stress of short but stimulating sprints.

While I love and understand the optimism of people who set long-term goals, I find the time frame of these goals depressing. The end result seems to be far away in the future: five or ten years from now. I find it daunting because I want to live and achieve right now.

I want to be able to travel while I can hike mountains without being bent over from the arthritic pain in my knees. I want to enjoy a zip-line without dropping my dentures in the jungles below me. I want to be able to stand in a long line at the Musée d’Orsay without leaning on my walker.

When it comes down to long-term goals:

Yes, I am intimidated and overwhelmed by big long-term goals. Mostly I fear their time frame. Instead of setting up five, six, ten year goals, I break down my plans and dreams into small but intensive sprints. Instead of saying where I am going to be in three years from now, I choose to decide where I want to be in six or three months from now.

A short but meaningful sprint requires planning and strategy.

It is the challenge that creates motivation. It is the drive that pushes me forward.

When I decided to visit my grandmother last year, I set myself a goal to save up a certain amount of cash for this trip. I did not want to charge a penny on the credit card. I had about five months to accomplish my sprint. Being a spender who likes to self-indulge in blissful shopping, I did run out of steam by the fifth month. The end result was very rewarding nevertheless.

In order to sprint and finish your sprint successfully :

Focus on what is important right now.

Visualize the end result – see the light

Maintain your eye contact (focus) on that light (end result.)

When running out of steam, give yourself a short break, slow down a little, take a breath and sprint again.

I am definitely a sprinter too! I just had one of those sprint moments this week doing some last-minute studying for an exam I should have been preparing for for a month! But it worked out and I always do it the same. Honestly, I want to pay off my debt faster than it seems possible right now, so I have sprint days where I work ALL day on blogging, traffic etc, then I take 1-2 days off. Consistency has never been a part of my life, so now I am slowly changing it. But I know sprinting and bursts of activity always will be!

Interesting… When I was at school I was not a sprinter. I think because I studied in my third language and it took me longer to digest information. I think back then I was a marathon runner. I became a sprinter much later. 🙂

I hear you on the long term goals–it’s tough. my strategy is to start making small changes today. we started setting aside $100 a month to put into our retirement accounts. That’s not much and we’re definitely not maxing out, but we hope to increase as the years go by. When you think of the long term and how much you have to save, it’s daunting. you have to focus on the small changes that snowball into big changes.

I am not sure I agree with SB that sprinting in one direction will get you to run a marathon faster but it can get you there. Thinking about it many people run marathons by combining running and walking – they finish but not cecessarily very fast.

I suppose with getting where one wishes to be what matters most is to keep focused on the ‘big picture’ – the rest is just different techniques.

I go for both the long term and the medium term, as well as the short term. Long-term, I would love capital-based financial independence, but that will take a long time, so in the short and medium term I am focusing on building up side income. 🙂

Great point Aloysa about sprinting or running a marathon. Nice imagery about ziplinging with dentures flying out, haha! Kudos for finding out what type of “training” works for you and what doesn’t. Good luck with your sprint!

Your dream retirement life sounds awesome. I like it. It is similar to the dreams I have. For me, I find closer term goals that add up to the big goal works really well. Meeting those milestones along the way helps with keeping motivated for the big goal.

I’m one of those people that needs to combine approaches. I love seeing the big picture, so I track everything long term, but if I have to go forever without a success, like you, I just get disprited and turn to something else to get me my emotional high.
For that reason, I set milestones along my long term path and celebrate whenever I reach one of those. For example, this last fall, I finally owed less money than I borrowed on my undergrad student loans. That felt like a huge win. And then this April, we will pay off the work we had done on our basement, and we’ll reach 50% of our non-mortgage debt paid (from when I started tracking at the end of 2009). I am totally motivated to reach those milestones. Once I do, I give myself a few weeks to enjoy, and then I find the next point on the path I want to be at and set a new milestone.

Interesting word choice: emotional high. I think that is exactly what I get from short-term goals – emotional high. It can be addicting and motivating at the same time.
Wow! You are doing so great! I am impressed!

I’m the more slow and steady type. I’m not a marathoner or a sprinter, I’m a hiker. 🙂
You have to find your own path because everyone has different temperament and experience.
I think as long as we are making positive progress, we are doing pretty good in general.

I’m a marathon runner (in money terms, anyway!), but like to break things down into shorter term goals to get to that long-term destination. I think you have to work with what’s best for you, and how you operate. Those short-term sprints could get you someplace great down the line! Anyway, I like the way you describe this whole concept, nice post.

I’m like you when I’m making a significant change in my life. I think, ‘I can do anything short term’. I mostly say this when I’m trying to add a mile to my run- God, I wish I was a sprinter!
When we first started getting serious about cutting back we made our goal short. The first one was six months (that seemed LONG at the time). I checked into it monthly though and reminded myself that even if I stopped after one month we were a huge jump ahead of our debt. It got me to the end. And then…I didn’t want to go back to how we were spending!